


Gone Horribly Right

by Ryo Hoshi (Hoshi_Ryo)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ashen Romance | Auspistice, Autopsies of Failed Relationships, Doomed Timelines, F/F, F/M, Introspection, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 20:37:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3664122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoshi_Ryo/pseuds/Ryo%20Hoshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In one timeline, Kanaya has an epiphany and accidentally dooms a timeline via good auspisticism.</p>
<p>(No failed relationships in here.  Which is entirely the problem.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gone Horribly Right

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WitchTiara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchTiara/gifts).



> I actually don't believe this was a functional auspisticism canonically--not when taking into account what we learn about how an auspisticism is supposed to work and Vriska overall. (I don't hate Vriska, it's just that the only good, healthy relationship she gets into canonically is with Meenah after she finally manages to grow as a person. Which of course had to be regoned because nope we can't have Vriska develop as a character, that'd be horrible.)
> 
> This is canon-compliant in the sense that this is entirely intended to be a doomed timeline--contradictions are intentional and part of that.

The truth at the heart of the matter, in the end, was that it was doomed from the start, the ship sailing with a slow, slow leak that more honesty might have caused to be discovered before it had been too long and critical mass had been hit. It was also, unfortunately, fated: It was only in doomed timelines where they realized things in time, and either abandoned ship or made emergency repairs in time.  
In the Alpha Timeline, Kanaya kept her true, flushed feelings for Vriska secret, forgetting just how essential platonic hate was for a good, functional auspisticism, and everything went to that place full of fucking angels.

Kanaya leaned back a little, away from her husktop, thinking over the conversation she had just had with Terezi. It wasn’t quite a pale relationship for them: Terezi was in diamonds with Vriska, but… She had mentioned something important.  
(And in the Alpha Timeline, Terezi had considered it, but stopped before typing those fatal words.)  
Vriska tended to get her quadrants confused. It was a simple statement, and quite indisputably accurate as observations went when it came to Vriska.  
It worked like a pebble dropped into a pool, though, ripples spreading out, Kanaya realizing more and more how accurate that was.  
Vriska had been wavering all over the place with her, never quite on her side outside of the platonic quadrants but sometimes it seemed like her meddling was being, well, enjoyed in a pale way, instead of disliked as was proper towards a good middle leaf.  
She was not the only person Vriska had been wavering with, either. From how Terezi had been speaking, her own relationship with Vriska had been threatening to flip pitch, as Vriska kept pushing at her, in some ways being even worse a moirail than Eridan and Feferi were. (And was it ashen cheating on Eridan and Vriska to sometimes wonder if maybe Eridan and Feferi would flip pitch finally and give her a chance to meddle there?)  
As for Vriska’s flushed quadrant, she had been pushing at Tavros hard, never mind that even if she was right both about their Ancestors and her own luck, Kanaya still felt it was off to try to repeat your Ancestor’s quadrants. Besides, her pushing with Tavros was closer to pitch than flushed…  
The more actual, serious thought she gave to Vriska, the more her feelings shifted towards the right place for an auspistice: cold, platonic hate for both outer leaves, no favoritism for either, because the thing was that it needed balance.

The thing was, in fact, this also doomed the timeline.

Kanaya spent more time with Eridan, repairing the damage of her foolish flushed crush on Vriska.  
As she got to know him, things smoothed out, a little, oil poured over troubled waters, and he had a certain platonic appeal. Maybe, if she had not slipped in as a middle leaf, in her original intention of somehow landing Vriska as her matesprit, she would have ended up pale for him. He was not what she expected a male troll to be like, too interested in taking charge instead of the usual roles for seadweller males of decorations and domesticity and the like.  
Of course, he would take a lot of work to have as a moirail, if you expected him to behave like his gender and caste normally did, though Kanaya wasn’t sure Eridan realized it yet.  
Kanaya was not going to flip pale on him, though, not as long as he and Vriska needed a middle leaf. Without the blinders of her old flush feelings for Vriska, she was hating both platonically, comfortable in admitting now when it was Vriska who needed to be emphatically auspisticized.

Going into Sgrub, things were not too different.  
The only significant change at this point was that Vriska and Eridan were still needing auspisticized, though it was more to keep it from sliding fully pitch, and instead of Eridan asking her to return to being their middle leaf Kanaya was still auspisticizing for them.  
On this hinged everything.

The change multiplied, quickly. Vriska might have been more stable than her Alpha Timeline self, but she still did try to force Tavros into her flushed quadrant when he hated her more than pitied her.  
Instead of the disaster of an auspisticism that Kanaya’s efforts were, she and Eridan worked together, reigning in Vriska. Part of what a healthy blackrom relationship did was put the brakes on you; your spade challenged and pushed you to improve, blade sharpening blade, while your leaves were there to check you when you were going to far, to club you with clues.  
Approval and support and calming were all things one asked of matesprits and moirails, which was why you needed all of them to be filled. It was a careful balance, as Karkat would explain at length if you gave him a chance, both to do so and gain the maturity and experience to be able to explain it without relying so much upon his romcoms.

In this timeline, Eridan left his own planet earlier, heading for Tavros’s with Kanaya, on a mission.

The changes cascaded from there. Vriska ascended from her Quest Cocoon not with Tavros fleeing from it in tears, but with Kanaya and Eridan watching, waiting for her.

Vriska’s ego was punctured and safely deflated well before the time they had to flee to the meteor.  
Ironically, this was where the timeline was well and truly doomed, despite it having been by objective measures a more successful one. Without Vriska’s egomania, Bec Noir would never come to be, leaving the causal loop unclosed, and they simply never were able to leave the meteor, never able to contact the Kids in Earth’s Beta Session, and died there slowly.

That Eridan watched with curiosity as the Alpha Timeline’s players entered the dreambubble he shared right then with his Feferi, wings flapping gently, listening as they asked her to heal their friend and wondering a little where things had gone wrong with their timeline yet gone right in the one that this live version of his middle leaf had.  
It was for the best that he never would know that it had been the other way around.


End file.
